Of course, when Hillary called people "deplorable", she was
a) talking about people who already supported Trump
b) only discussing *half* of his voters, and
c) absolutely correct, according to polling data.
And you think that's how that statement and others like it as well as the general tone came across to the populace?
Actually, "web designer" seems like the sort of small business that could be done from anywhere, with adequate infrastructure (which was also something that democrats have pushed). As such, it'd make a pretty good job for that small town.
That's not the point. Rural America hasn't lost jobs it's lost industries and you can't replace industries with individual jobs, at least not easily and directly.
And I'd still argue that if you expect the 55 year old blue collar worker who ran station #4 on the Canyanero assembly line for 30 years to start over again being a web designer competing with fresh out of college kids living in the city... that's probably not realistic.
Yeah we could replace the manufacturing and other "Rust Belt / Farm Belt / Rural" jobs with remote tech jobs but A) there's absolutely no chance there is enough of those to go around, B) if you businessman you might as well just move those jobs overseas and C) there's zero push to do that. All the economic recovery efforts have been focused on the cities. No one's even trying replace the rural jobs. There's a lot of "We could do this" going around, not much else.
And that's part of the problem - so long as many of the groups they "blame" include black Americans, immigrants, and muslims, none of whom have done anything to them, they are in fact bigots. Thus, we get to Trump's brazen bigotry against, and promises of state oppression of, these groups.
And again that's a nice moral high ground to stand on while you lose.
And I don't buy it. The country hasn't changed that much in the last 4 years. You telling me all these bigots and racists that refused to elect Hillary Clinton elected Barack Obama?
If it really is just racism and bigotry what changed? How does the rich white lady from the established Southern political family somehow garner less of the "racist bigot" vote then the actual black guy if that is the major factor?
And here's the thing. The numbers here don't just add up. Every demographic that the assumption was they were going to be Anti-Trump was up from the last election. If McCain and Romney couldn't win just on the backs of the bigoted straight white men there's no way Trump could.
And again the number back that up. Trump surely lost the vote among all these demographics... but not in the numbers this narrative would suggest. He got 33% of the Latino vote and 13% of the Black Male vote. He got 14% of the LGBT vote. He got 42% of the female vote! Those are numbers are small but they aren't the total curb stompings needed to fit the narrative of "Racists, bigoted, sexist, homophobic sexual assaulter" being the biggest factor in people voting. Either a statistically small but significant percentage of women, blacks, homosexual, etc have higher priorities then how their individual demographics are treated or there is some other X factor in here.
If 42% of women voted for Trump, I have a hard time with the narrative that the 53% of men who did have to be "Okay with sexism."
The numbers on the other groups are smaller but still significant. Think about if you know 10 gay people, statistically 1 or 2 of them voted for Trump. That changes the landscape at least a bit doesn't it?
Is it possible that the Dems were counting on the non-white, non-male, non-straight, non-Christian demographics just a little more then they should have been?
It's quite natural that he attracted a large number of open bigots, and that people who voted against him are strongly suspected of, at the very least, tolerating such garbage.
See above.
And again we're back in the loop. If there really are that many bigots (or those tolerant of bigotry or whatever) and you're just too good to go after those votes... have fun losing.
I don't think it's that simple, but if that's the narrative you want to go with, that's the ending your story kind of has to have.
Well, not quite, since Hillary received more votes than Trump. But certainly, there were people who bought Trump's BS.
Hillary was courting and counting electoral votes and ignoring the popular vote same as Trump. She was playing the same game she just lost it.
Do you really think that they would have voted for a different party? From what I see, the problen wasn't converting people on the other side, but convincing people on yours to vote. This idea that calling the other side deplorable is what convinced them not to switch sides is nonsense.
"Nothing would make them vote for me anyway" isn't a good attitude to have in politics. And if it's true your loss is guaranteed so there's no point in trying.
I also don't think it's true.
